


Acts of Service

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Series: Loyalties [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Cultural Differences, Cunnilingus, Domestic, Emotional Labor, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Languages and Linguistics, Love Languages, Mando'a, Marriage, Multi, Names, Nonverbal Communication, OT3, Old Canon and Expanded Universe Elements, POV Bisexual Character, Polyamory, Polyfidelity, Sex With the Lights Off, Sign Language, Vaginal Sex, Worldbuilding, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-03-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:14:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22452490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: “Are there any other Mandalorians in arrangements like ours?”“Polyfidelity happens,” he says. Which is a non-answer.“What’s polyfidelity?” Winta asks.Cara turns, wondering how long she’s been awake. The girl’s eyes are clear and she pushes back the blankets. The runt reaches for Winta, and she takes him from Cara.Without hesitation Djarin explains, “It’s when more than two people have a committed relationship as equal partners.”“Like a marriage,” Cara adds, and looks back at Djarin. “Right?”He says nothing, and Winta says, “So that’s how I went from having one person who can tell me what to do, to three?”
Relationships: Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Omera (Star Wars)
Series: Loyalties [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638454
Comments: 96
Kudos: 170





	1. Seen

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is fully written, and will update on Fridays. Massive thanks to my amazing betas @Bloop84 and @thelostcolony. Any mistakes left over are mine alone. 
> 
> Suggested listening is here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5x6C3ftlqsDwnxUx5XuWTx

Everything on Sorgan is a circle. The houses, the harvest seasons, the life cycle of krill, the dances, the little woven collar things everybody wears. The days tread a path so regular that it becomes a deep groove over time, where the people who start on that path tend to stay. Not because it’s an easy way to live, but because leaving would be harder, would be all but unthinkable. 

The whole place spins along until something makes it wobble. That didn’t used to happen often, but Cara has a heavier step than most people. 

She plants her feet at the edge of one of the ponds, and Omera shades her eyes to look up at her. “What have you got there?” 

Cara hoists her basket and blanket. “Lunch! You want to get out of here?” 

Omera glances about them, at the harvest underway and the hundreds of things still to be done. “Just you and me,” Cara goes on. “Quiet afternoon in the woods. Leave your worries, and your waders, far behind.” 

Omera arches a brow at Cara and opens her mouth to answer—and that’s when Winta spots them from three ponds away and cries out, “Are we having a picnic?” 

Cara stares at Omera. Omera waits, her eyes shining and her face straining with the effort of holding back a smile. 

“Yeah,” Cara relents. “Sure, we are.”

“I’ll get the little one!” Winta declares, and takes off. 

“Family only,” Cara calls after her, before any of the other kids get swept up like flotsam in Winta’s wake. She didn’t pack a lot of food. 

Omera is smiling fully now. Cara stoops to help her out of the pond. “It was a good notion,” Omera says, patting Cara’s cheek. 

“Nah, this is fine,” Cara says. “We’ll have fun.” 

Omera lets that go unchallenged. “I’ll put on some dry clothes,” she says, “and I’ll leave my waders.” As she goes, she gives Cara a look over her shoulder that makes her long for evening. 

Cara waits at the outermost ring of ponds, so she sees well in advance when Djarin walks out of the village to join her. “Heard there was a picnic,” he says. 

“You can’t even eat with us,” Cara points out. She doesn’t mean to sound so testy. 

“No. But it’s a nice day, and I finished my chores.” At Cara’s frown, he tilts his head. “You had designs.” 

“Don’t sound so smug.” 

“I’m not smug. I’ll make sure you get some time alone with her.” 

Cara shoves the blanket at him. “I don’t need you to arrange my social calendar.” 

He tucks the blanket under one arm and puts the other arm across her shoulders. “Why would I take Winta’s job?” 

She grumbles, but before she can riposte, Omera arrives. She’s in a lighter dress, the one she doesn’t wear in the ponds and keeps packed away beneath their bed. It lays nicely on her, catching every stray breeze and swaying around her bare legs. 

Winta follows at her heels with the green nugget in her arms. “We’re ready!”

“Okay, scouting team.” Cara passes Winta a handheld scanner that will pick up any life forms larger than the kid. “Your mission is to find a suitable clearing for our base of operations, where we won’t be disturbed.” 

Winta lights up brighter than the scanner screen. She charges toward the trees. 

“Stay in sight,” Omera calls. She links arms with Cara. “Shall we?” 

“Ma’am.” 

An hour’s hike brings them to a clearing that Winta presents with a triumphant flourish. Cara is starving by the time she lays out what was meant as an appetizer for two, and is now a meager spread for four. She contents herself with a piece of flatbread as the kids tear through the berries. 

Omera sits opposite her and Djarin on the blanket, one leg bent strategically so Cara has a glimpse beyond her shapely calf to a thigh in partial shade. It sets her to daydreaming. One of these days she  _ will _ get Omera out here on her own. 

“Thought I’d take the kids camping tonight,” says Djarin. 

“Camping?” echoes Winta from the edge of the clearing, where she and the runt dig for edible roots. “Mama, can I?” 

Omera considers Cara, but since this wasn’t planned, Cara’s innocent look is genuine. “I don’t know,” says Omera. “In the woods, at night…” 

“Cara, can I keep using your scanner? We’ll see anything coming from kilometers away!” 

Cara makes a show of deliberating. “Bring it back without a scratch.”

“Won’t have any trouble, as long as they listen.” For a guy wearing steel plate, Djarin is awful transparent. 

Winta picks up the kid and brings him over to give Omera a double helping of Big Sad Eyes. “I swear I’ll listen, and we’ll go to sleep early, and I won’t let the baby put anything weird in his mouth. Pleeeease?” 

_Thanks_ , Cara signs behind Winta’s back. 

Djarin signs back, _It’s fine_. 

“All right,” says Omera. 

Winta kisses her cheek. “Thank you!” 

“Don’t thank me.” 

Winta sets the kid down, and turns to put both arms around Djarin’s shoulders. He pats the back of her hand; he can almost do it without looking awkward now. 

Cara can almost watch it without getting misty-eyed now. Somehow, despite the scarcity, they landed themselves a good man. 

And he can’t even eat with them. 

The touch of Omera’s boot against her own is the only way Cara knows her expression has changed. She covers it with a smirk. “Golly, no kids for a whole night. What do you wanna do?” 

“I think the new season of  _ Love In the Time of the Old Republic _ is out.” 

“Perfect. We can mend so many nets.” 

Winta makes a face and leads the kid away. 

When they’re back in the village, Cara stops by the cookfires for her share of fresh damper bread and fried mushrooms. She finds Djarin in the barn with the kids, packing the tent and bedrolls. “Come in and eat before you go,” she tells him. 

He nods, and follows her into the house. Omera looks up at them, pulling on clothes she can work in. “Why, hello.” 

Djarin hesitates, and for a second Cara thinks he might kill the lights and opt for a quickie instead of the meal. Omera, for her part, dresses a little slower, but all too soon she is dressed. The moment passes when she does, with a smile for them both. 

Cara sets down the food and moves to follow Omera out the door, but Djarin grabs her elbow. He raises his free hand, and the glowlamps, keyed to a sensor in the ceiling, go out. A moment later his lips are on Cara’s. It’s a brief thing, all fondness and no force. “Don’t waste time on nets,” he says. 

“I don’t plan to waste a second,” Cara tells him. 

“Good,” he says, in the helmet once more. Cara waves, and the lights come on, and she leaves him to eat. 

Outside, Omera turns the largest of the krill on a screen so they’ll dry out evenly. They’re too mealy at that size for brewing, and when they’re dry they’ll be ground down for feed. Cara goes to help, starting at the other end of the screen so they’ll meet in the middle. 

“You’re troubled,” Omera observes. 

“What if I’m just full of anticipation?” 

Omera is well accustomed to her deflection. “That would make two of us.” 

Cara flips krill silently; Omera’s patience is like a blanket on her shoulders, heavy and comforting at the same time. Djarin walks by with the kids, and Cara waves. The runt has a tiny bedroll on his back, clearly made by Winta. 

As the camping expedition disappears past the cookfires, Omera’s shoulder brushes Cara’s. They’ve reached the middle. “When you figure out how to put it into words,” Omera says, “will you tell me?” 

“Of course.” Easy for her to say, when she has no idea what’s on the other side of this nebulous discontentment. It’s the same  _ not fair, not right _ unease that preceded her departure from the New Republic, and it took Cara ages to sort through that. “Are you hungry?” 

Omera bumps her shoulder. “Famished.” 

“Meet me inside?” 

“I’ll be waiting.” 

Cara fetches another plate, piled high with supper for both of them, but when she goes into the house, Omera is already naked on the bed. “So that’s how it is,” Cara says through a smile. 

“Don’t mind me,” says Omera. 

Not possible. Cara tries to take her time bringing the plate, tries to mosey when she’d rather drop the food and slide on her knees across the floorboards to her. She drinks in the sight of Omera. Life is fleeting, and they rarely get to keep the lights on. 

Long hair, dark but sun-kissed at its ends, loosed from its ties and fanned across the pillow. A smooth brow over large, dark eyes, eyes that Cara could fall into. Eyes that speak volumes even when Omera doesn’t. A long, proud nose and high cheekbones. Skin like the first bloom of dawn in the sky. A serious mouth with full lips, whose smiles are generous and well-earned. A noble point to her chin. 

How can so much presence fit in someone so slight? Her neck, her shoulders, her arms—all so slender she could be considered frail, if one didn’t see the work she did all day, every day. Her hands are the strongest part of her, the gentlest, the most careful. Sometimes it seems as though Omera has her own gravitational field, like she’s the one still point in life. How can she carry what she carries and keep a lightness in her step, and try to take Cara’s burdens too? 

Cara stops at the bedside and keeps the plate high, and after a minute Omera’s stomach whines. She sits up to reach the food, right where Cara wants her. 

Stars, Cara is hungry. 

She hands the plate over, and she pulls her gauntlets and her collar off, but leaves the rest for now, and she kneels down and looks up at Omera. Omera touches Cara’s cheek, her thumb lingering under Cara’s eye, at the starbird symbol. 

Her thighs are warm against Cara’s palms. She parts them for her, and Cara puts her lips above Omera’s knee. She kisses her way higher, and Omera makes a sound that might be for Cara or it might be for the food. 

Cara wets her lips and places them reverently on the thickest and softest part of Omera’s thigh, and she sucks at her skin until Omera gasps and shoves her head gently. Cara grins up at her, and flattens her tongue on that spot. 

Then she turns toward the chestnut curls at the juncture of Omera’s thighs. She keeps her eyes up as she presses her mouth there, working carefully between lush folds, and in the same moment that Cara reaches the rich warm center of her, Omera’s eyelids flutter and she makes a low sound. She sets the plate aside. 

Cara breathes in through her nose, a breath full of Omera’s heady scent. She opens her mouth and Omera’s taste floods it, sings on her tongue. Above her, Omera’s breasts rise and fall with her steadying breaths; her stomach tenses as she shifts to give Cara all of her. A tremor goes through her golden skin as Cara puts her hands behind Omera’s knees and lifts them onto her shoulders. Omera leans back on her elbows, and that gives Cara an even better view of her perfect breasts. 

Cara sweeps her tongue up the full length of Omera’s cunt, and then she fixes her lips at the apex. 

She could do this for the rest of her life. 

She could watch for the rest of her life as Omera’s eyes get a faraway look and her face relaxes, her lips part, a flush rises on her cheeks and her chest. 

Cara could spend the rest of her life drawing Omera’s clit just between her lips, and grazing it with the tip of her tongue, and seeing Omera quake in response. She could watch forever as Omera’s control slips away and her head falls back and her ribs move beneath her skin as she takes quick, desperate gasps and her arms shake until they give out and she collapses to the bed. 

Cara eases Omera’s legs down, and she gets off her knees. She could die happy from the satisfaction on Omera’s face and the way it takes her a minute to come back. The spot Cara kissed on her inner thigh is starting to bruise beautifully. She stretches out beside her. 

Omera reaches over to get a handful of Cara’s hair and pull her in toward her lips. She drags her tongue across Cara’s jaw, cleaning her off, and if Cara wasn’t ready before, she would be now. 

Omera kisses her thoroughly, and she leans back and looks into Cara’s eyes and drops her hand to the shirt Cara still wears, and she whispers, “Let me see you.” 

And Cara isn’t about to stop giving her what she wants now. 


	2. Cover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one stopped her from following the young Mandalorian who found her and Djarin in the wreckage of the plaza. No one stopped her from entering the hidden bunker, where she is the only person with her face uncovered. No one stopped her from taking Djarin’s helmet away from the infirmary, and no one stops her, now, from entering the forge.

It’s the sort of day that makes Cara long to shuck krill. 

They know the risks when they leave Sorgan. Greef only calls them when a quarry takes out more than one Guild member. In partnership with the Guild, he underwrites the bounty to make it lucrative enough to justify their involvement, and Cara and Djarin bring the quarry in cold. 

Today all they have is proof of termination, and it was hard-bought. 

No one stopped her from following the young Mandalorian who found her and Djarin in the wreckage of the plaza. No one stopped her from entering the hidden bunker, where she is the only person with her face uncovered. No one stopped her from taking Djarin’s helmet away from the infirmary, and no one stops her, now, from entering the forge. 

She knows how to say  _ you’re still alive _ in their language, but she opts to say it in Basic. The Armorer cants her helmet in response, and Cara can’t help but imagine a dry smile. She offers the cratered metal of Djarin’s helmet and the Armorer accepts it. 

Unburdened, Cara drops onto a bench. It is unsurprisingly hot in the forge, which does nothing for the fact that she needs a sanisteam. But it’s good to see the Armorer again—good to know that wherever there is a Mandalorian who can shape beskar, even on the other side of the Rim from Nevarro, a covert will grow around her and fold other spindrift Mandalorians into a new clan. 

“How is the child?” the Armorer asks, her voice as unyielding as her handiwork. 

“Good,” says Cara. “Safe. Getting strong.” The Armorer makes no acknowledgement, but her satisfaction is somehow tangible. Emboldened, Cara says, “Can I ask you about the helmet thing?”

The Armorer closes her tongs around the cracked visor and yanks it out. Cara winces. “Our secrecy is our survival.” 

“I get that part,” Cara says. Though, to be fair, the Armorer has a one-of-a-kind golden helmet with spikes, and a pelt on her shoulders, and Cara recognized her instantly—all of which seems to defeat the purpose of concealing one’s identity. But Cara doesn’t have to understand it. 

Only, she kind of does. 

Cara squints into the blue flames as the armorer melts the helmet down. “Hypothetically,” Cara says, “if a Mandalorian had a committed relationship with a non-Mandalorian, or maybe two, to the point that they were cohabiting for over a year and raising children together… they could show their face?” 

“Such is rare,” the Armorer says. 

“But it does happen?”

The Armorer levers the forge closed. She does it twice more before answering. “If the  _ haat _ is spoken, the union is sealed.” 

Which leaves Cara with more questions, but when she opens her mouth to ask another, the Armorer starts hammering. Eventually she quenches the reforged helmet, and presents it to Cara. “He will complete it when he has healed,” the Armorer says. 

“When he wakes, will you tell him I’m on the ship?” 

“You may wait here.” 

Cara peers at her. “But I’m…” 

“ _Aruetii_ ,” the Armorer offers—much too pretty a word for its meaning. “He would have died, if not for you?” 

“No, not this time.” This time she owes him one. 

“Then he considers you worthy. You will not be turned away.” The Armorer presses the helmet into Cara’s hands. 

Cara looks down at the vacant space where the visor will go. Nothing now but an empty mask. 

She takes it to the infirmary and sets it on the floor by the head of his pallet with the rest of his scorched armor. Then Cara reaches through the heavy curtains protecting him from view, and she feels along the edge of the pallet until she finds his hand. It takes a moment for him to match her grip, but he does. 

Cara waits until he lets go, and then she leaves the covert. Maybe she won’t be turned away from this place, but it’s not where she belongs. 

\- - - 

Two days later, Djarin walks under his own power onto the _Razor Crest_ , finds Cara in the cockpit, and bends down to touch his helmet to her brow. “Hey,” she greets him. “How much do you remember?”

“Mostly how much it hurt,” he says. 

“Looked like a lot. Thanks for covering me.” He nods, and starts spooling up the _Crest_. Cara drums her fingers on her thigh and goes on, “I sent the recording. Karga’s waiting with our pay.” 

Djarin dials up the charts for Nevarro and calculates their jump. He turns his head, but doesn’t quite look back at her. “You want to talk?” 

Cara watches the stars stream together into the rippling surface of hyperspace. “No,” she says, and she goes to the darkened hold. 

Once the cockpit door shuts behind him, there’s no light at all; even the control panels are covered. She hears him climb down the ladder, feels him stop beside her. When he takes off the helmet, his breath warms her cheek. 

They stand there a minute. He doesn’t reach for his binders this time, nor does Cara. They don’t go to the bunk, and two days of waiting, keyed up with this nameless uncertainty, left her without any urge to grapple him. 

Instead, Cara pulls off her gauntlets and shoves one hand into his soft hair. In the absence of light, her world narrows to sensation. She knows him best by texture and by taste. His stubble is rough on her lips, but his mouth, when she finds it, is pliant and warm and welcoming. 

She traces the patch of freshly healed skin at the back of his head. He sighs through his nose. Neither of them want to explain that to Omera. Her other hand catches the worn fabric of his cowl, keeping him close. 

He crowds her back to the ladder. His fingers are deft—he gets her belt off and trousers down in a handful of seconds, and that’s before he ditches his gloves. Cara frees one leg from her boot and pants. She reaches into her tactical vest for the prophylactic she stashed for this occasion. He moves away from her long enough to open it and put it on himself. 

Then he’s back, using the leverage afforded by the ladder to lift her thighs to his hips, and Cara sucks in a breath because he hasn’t bothered with his gunbelt, and the metal of his tassets is ice on her skin. But that’s fine by her. 

Cara grabs the rung beneath her with one hand and the back of his neck with the other, and she pulls him close, and when he lines himself up and pushes into her, they each groan into the other’s mouth. 

They’re still alive. 

He doesn’t move fast, but he moves deep, as far as he can, as far as Cara can take him. It’s a good, grounding thing, a thing that’s just theirs in the in-between times before they come home, to burn off the last of the adrenaline. Usually there’s more preamble than this. Sometimes, a plot. They don’t need that today. 

“Cara,” he says against her lips, voice unsteady, drawing the syllables out from the back of his throat.

“Din,” she answers, and he trembles. 

He puts one fingertip on her, and now Cara trembles, too. 

\- - - 

They come home significantly richer, and tired. It’s late and the moons are nearly down. After a long march back to the village, they’re in sight of the house when Djarin stops.

“What is it?” Cara whispers. 

“The kids aren’t in the loft,” he says. 

It’s probably fine. But neither of them have lived nearly four decades by not being very, very careful. They approach slowly, with him on point and Cara watching his six. She hears snores from the other houses. It’s probably fine. 

His hand is on his blaster as he parts the tarp that keeps out the light, and Cara sees his silhouette relax. She follows him in. 

A single glowlamp sheds light on Omera in a chair by the bed, the kid passed out on her shoulder. Winta’s in the bed, fitfully asleep under many blankets. Omera stops humming and looks up at them. “Is she okay?” says Djarin. 

“Day two of a fever,” Omera reports. “Welcome home.” 

“I’ll sit up with her,” Cara says. “You should get some rest.” Djarin leaves to lay out mats in the barn. 

“Won’t say no,” Omera replies. She hands over the runt, who does not wake upon being transferred to Cara’s chest. Cara sits, and instead of leaving, Omera leans against the back of her chair. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, Cara?” 

Cara keeps her gaze on the floor. “He nearly died. So, you know, a work day.” 

Omera breathes out. “I hate when you two leave,” she says—so quietly Cara could almost believe she didn’t hear it. 

And Cara hates giving her reasons for that. “We both get antsy,” she says, weakly. “He just doesn’t show it.” 

“Sure he does. Was it worth it?” 

“Of course it wasn’t worth it!” 

Winta whimpers, and the kid’s ears twitch, and Cara remembers herself and lowers her voice to a sharp whisper. “No. Twenty thousand credits isn’t worth it.” 

“Twenty thousand, you say?” 

Despite herself, Cara mirrors Omera’s small, weary smile. “Tell us to quit,” she says. 

Omera’s smile sours. “I won’t be the nag who makes you stay in when there are places to go and faces to punch.” 

She could never be a nag. “He’d quit tomorrow if you asked.” 

“No one’s compromising anything to be here,” Omera insists. Cara turns her eyes away from the resolve in her expression, to the light-blocking tarp that lines the walls. “What is that look?” 

“Envy, I think,” Cara says. “You didn’t compromise your cause when you left the war.” 

“You don’t know all of it,” she warns—a familiar refrain. 

Omera was too long a Fulcrum to give her the particulars, even now, but that’s all right. Cara doesn’t need to know all of it. “I know you.” 

“We had the same cause.”

“Sure, but now I fight for money. And fun.”

“Did you compromise something, to do that?” 

After a pause to consider the house and the sleeping kids, and the idea that she or Djarin or both of them could die on the next job and leave Omera alone again, Cara says, “I don’t know.” 

“Well, I do, because I know you. And I wouldn’t, if you had compromised.” She bends down to kiss Cara’s cheek, and then lingers there to whisper in her ear, “And living here is not making you soft.” 

With her arms full, Cara can only nudge Omera’s foot with her own. Sorgan couldn’t make Omera soft after ten years. 

They wish each other goodnight, and Omera smoothes back Winta’s hair one more time before she leaves. 

Cara gets the kid into the crook of one arm so she can check Winta’s forehead. Still warm. Winta frowns in her sleep—a little fighter. 

She looks down at the runt in his blanket, equally unconscious. Cara is tired, but as always, without Omera there to be the still point, her thoughts are all over the place. 

The kid is about as heavy as the busted helmet was. “You ever see your old man’s face?” she asks. 

Though there’s no one else awake to hear, she immediately regrets giving voice to it. But the kid must have by now. Somewhere along the way, surely Djarin spoke the  _ something something Manda _ to acknowledge the runt as his son, if for no other reason than to make life a little easier in the privacy of the ship. 

She should not feel this jealous of a tiny lizard-child. 

She should not be wasting time obsessing over the single solitary thing Djarin has not given them. She doesn’t need to see him to  _ know _ him. This life is good. It’s more than enough. She’s been happier in the last year than she’s been in a very long time. Happier than she ever expected to be, and here she is trying to think herself into misery. 

Would it be a compromise for him to give them that? To speak the _haat_ , whatever it is, and show himself to them? Can there be some bet he’s still hedging after all this time? 

Or maybe, somehow, it’s not him. 

Maybe the Mandalorians reserve that for a pair of sentients only. Maybe there’s a cap on the number of outsiders in one relationship—maybe they’re flying under the sensors on this one. She isn’t sure which option she hates more. 

Not for the first time, she wishes the Armorer spoke in plain Basic and not in riddles. Concealing the details of their people and culture is all well and good, but Cara needs solid intel. There are too many variables, too many moving targets, and Cara has always preferred hers still. 

The whirlwind wears her out. 

Cara only shuts her eyes for a minute. When she opens them, Djarin is back in the house, delivering breakfast. Three plates: her, Winta, and the kid. The litany of  _ not fair, not right _ starts up again. 

The runt chirrups a greeting, and Djarin kneels down to put his hand on the kid’s back. “You get some sleep?” Cara asks him. 

“I did. Guess you did, too.” 

“Guess so.” She swallows. “Can I ask you something?” He looks expectantly at her. “Are there any other Mandalorians in arrangements like ours?”

“Polyfidelity happens,” he says. Which is a non-answer. 

“What’s polyfidelity?” Winta asks. 

Cara turns, wondering how long she’s been awake. The girl’s eyes are clear and she pushes back the blankets. The runt reaches for Winta, and she takes him from Cara. 

Without hesitation Djarin explains, “It’s when more than two people have a committed relationship as equal partners.” 

“Like a marriage,” Cara adds, and looks back at Djarin. “Right?”

He says nothing, and Winta says, “So that’s how I went from having one person who can tell me what to do, to three?”

“Hey, I’m the  _ fun _ one,” Cara tells her. 

“I didn’t see you taking us camping,” Winta retorts, and climbs out of bed. She sets the kid down, takes two plates, and goes outside with the runt at her heels, like she didn’t just stab Cara straight in the heart. 

Djarin mutters something in Mando’a. 

“What?” Cara says.

“ _Edee be evaar_ ,” he repeats. “Means the age of rebellion is coming.”

“We’ve been there a while.”

He shakes his head. “Brace yourself.”

Cara takes her plate from him, and picks at her food. “What about polyfidelity between Mandalorians and _aruetiise_?” 

He cringes at her pronunciation. “I don’t know every Mandalorian.”

“Do you know any in our situation at all?”

“No,” he admits. “As far as I’m aware, we’re the first. Is that suddenly a problem for you?”

Cara could absolutely punch him. “I don’t know. Is it a problem for you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You tell me,” she challenges. 

He blows out a staticky breath, and stands up. “You want to spar?” he offers. Cara shakes her head. “You want to bone?”

“No,” she says. 

“Then I’m going for a walk. Maybe when I get back, we can have a productive conversation.” 

After he’s gone, Cara stays seated for ten slow breaths that do nothing to calm her down. Then she sets her plate aside, stands up, and goes out to the barn. 

Omera lazes on a mat in the shade of the barn, putting off the day’s work. She lifts her head as Cara stomps in and digs her duffle out of a basket. “Where are you going?”

“Into the woods,” Cara says, fighting to keep her voice even. She shoves a bedroll and a couple ration packs into her bag. “I need some air.”

“Okay,” Omera says carefully. She sits up and tracks Cara. Her eyes are wide; she knows something is very wrong, and if Cara meets her gaze for more than a few seconds, she’ll break down and tell Omera everything. “Can we expect you back tomorrow?”

Cara doesn’t trust herself to speak now, so she nods. Then she puts her bag over her shoulder and gives Omera a hasty kiss. “Be safe,” Omera says, and Cara pats the blaster on her hip. 

She takes the shortest possible path into the woods—the better to not cross Djarin’s. 

She hasn’t lied. She does need air, and they can expect her back tomorrow. 

She just won’t be there. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Edee be evaar_ \- literally "teeth of youth"


	3. Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is neither the time nor the place. Well, maybe the place, but definitely not the time. She glares at him. “Uncuff me.” 
> 
> “So you can run again?” He tilts his head. “Maybe I don’t know you like I thought I did, Dune, but you’ve never acted like a coward before.” 
> 
> Cara lunges, and he steps back just enough to dodge her free hand—but not far enough to avoid it when she sweeps his feet. He lands on the deck with a clang that reverberates through the whole ship. 
> 
> Cara: two. Bounty hunters: zero. 

On reflection, Cara isn’t sure how far she expected to get. 

Jenoport is filthier than Corellia, with none of the charm. Detritus gathers like snowdrifts against any vertical surface, and the locals look about as listless and used up. But this was the log-runners’ refueling stop, and she has to keep changing ships every chance she gets, though it will deplete her credits faster. 

There’s a likely candidate for the next leg of the journey in the spaceport. Before she approaches the captain, she makes a circuit of the main trade district, just in case. 

She picks up a shadow within minutes. Spots them when she stops to adjust her boot, and again when she lingers at the street meat stalls. They’d be better off trying to land a hit here in the open, not acting coy. But Cara humors them and buys a monkey lizard drumstick. She takes it to the nearest alley, throws it in a pile of garbage, and waits. 

And they follow, predictably, with a blaster in one hand and a blinking tracker fob in the other. 

Cara owes Karga a strongly worded message. He swore up and down he cleared her. But then, Karga isn’t the agent for this sector, and there’s a difference between clearing her through official channels, and deactivating every fob. 

“I hate to be the one to tell you this,” Cara says, “but the Guild discontinued my commission.” 

Her shadow primes their blaster. They’re young, or maybe an undersized humanoid; hard to tell with the wide, squat helmet. “Then I’ll bypass the Guild and take you to the client,” says a heavily filtered voice. 

“Mighty enterprising,” Cara says. She holds her wrists out. 

The hunter approaches slowly, blaster hand steady. They stow the fob and produce a pair of binders. Cara keeps her shoulders loose and breath even as they get closer. 

She gives nothing away until they have one end of the binders around her wrist—and then she snaps her free arm out to send the blaster spinning away. 

She moves before the hunter can back up, three quick punches to the torso in a row. Just enough power to drive the air out of them. The hunter has good reflexes and they’re fast, but not quite heavy enough to cause any damage when they land a kick above Cara’s hip. 

Cara slings her duffle off her shoulder and throws it at them, and when they bat it away, she grabs them around the neck and wallops their helmet. They go down satisfyingly hard. She gets her knee on the hunter’s back and rummages in their utility vest for the tracker fob. “Like your helmet,” Cara says, and she lifts it up from the ground, then slams it down on top of the fob. The hunter goes limp. 

Another blaster whines behind her, powering on. She raises her hands and turns, then lets out the breath she was holding. “Hey, Mando.” 

Djarin takes in the scene. He strides over and grabs her under one arm, and when she’s on her feet he makes a move toward the unconscious hunter—to kick them or shoot them, she can’t be sure. “Leave it,” Cara tells him. “They’re just a kid.” 

He grabs her duffle and shoves it at her. “Let’s go.”

She doesn’t move. “Yeah? Where?”

“Back to Omera. So you can tell her why you left.”

“Tell her yourself,” Cara says. 

“I said we could have a conversation,” he bites. “I didn’t say pack up and leave.” Not that she’d listen if he had. He prods her collar with one finger. “You owe her a reason. One night sitting up with a sick kid, and you’re off like a shot? She thinks it was _her_ , Cara.” 

Oh, no. “She said that?” 

“She didn’t need to. It was in her eyes.” 

Cara tries to picture what that kind of hurt would look like, and finds it hard to breathe. Djarin watches her until Cara looks away, and then he leads her out of the alley. 

The  _ Razor Crest  _ waits in a docking bay. He must have been minutes behind her; it was a dead giveaway to take a quarter of their profits from the last job, but there was no way around it. Could be he was already in orbit over Sorgan by the time the log-runners were ready to go. 

Once they’re in the hold with the ramp closed, Cara stops him at the ladder. “I wasn’t trying to hurt Omera.” 

“You weren’t trying not to,” he counters, and damn him, he’s right. 

Cara feels a tug at her wrist, and when she looks down, the binders she forgot about are closed around the ladder. She gives them a jerk, and they hold.

This is neither the time nor the place. Well, maybe the place, but definitely not the time. She glares at him. “Uncuff me.” 

“So you can run again?” He tilts his head. “Maybe I don’t know you like I thought I did, Dune, but you’ve never acted like a coward before.” 

Cara lunges, and he steps back just enough to dodge her free hand—but not far enough to avoid it when she sweeps his feet. He lands on the deck with a clang that reverberates through the whole ship. 

Cara: two. Bounty hunters: zero. 

“Bantha,” Cara spits like it’s _bastard_. She probably could have started with the safeword, but they both have a bad habit of doing things the hard way. 

He gets up, slowly, and passes the keychip over the binders. They fall open, and Cara breathes easier at once. 

“You come home,” he says, not moving away, “and you look Omera in the eye and tell her what this was all about. And then I’ll fly you anywhere you want, and you never have to see us again.” 

That isn’t what she wants. But maybe it’s what she deserves. 

Cara swallows around a sudden tightness in her throat. “What’s a _haat_?” 

His helmet moves a little from side to side as he searches her face. “ _Haat_ means truth.” 

She isn’t asking for a linguistics lesson. “But what  _ is _ it?” 

“A pact.” Cara glares, and Djarin admits, “A vow. The kind you’re thinking of is called a _riduurok_.” 

Vindication can be such a bitter thing. “And if you say it,” Cara says, “you can show your face.” 

“If everyone involved says it.” 

“But you’ve shaped a whole life around not showing it to us. Living in the dark.” Cara finds she’s gripping the ladder now, despite not being cuffed to it anymore, as if the deck might tilt, even here on solid ground. 

“It isn’t a hardship.” 

“Don’t lie to me!” 

Djarin goes rigid. “Okay,” he says. “Was I supposed to think you’d be into marriage?”

Cheap fighting words. No less than she deserves. “If that’s what it takes!” 

“It shouldn’t have to be what it takes, it should be what you _want_.” 

She lets go of the ladder and advances on him. “How was I supposed to want it, if I never knew it was on the table? How long did you plan to go on hiding yourself and not sharing meals with us before you mentioned there was another option? That isn’t—” She stops, clears her throat, swipes at her face. “That isn’t a full life together.”

He’s backed up as far as the weapons locker, and there he hesitates. Then he reaches up, and he’s going for the helmet, and she will not let him win like that. Cara turns her back before he can bare more than the cloth at his neck. 

“Oh, are you dying now?” She only asked him to break the rules  _ one _ time. The last thing she needs is him testing her. 

He sighs behind her. “Thought you wanted to see.” But then he switches off the glowpanels, and when it’s fully dark he steps forward until he’s at her back, and he sets his chin on her shoulder. 

“I still don’t understand why you left,” he says at her ear. 

Cara relaxes a little. The closeness helps. Slowly, tentatively, he brings his arms around her. She settles her forearms over his, and says, “You said as far as you knew, we’re the first. I left to find out if that’s true.” 

“You were going to look for other coverts,” he realizes, and Cara nods. A silent, disbelieving laugh grazes her jaw. “You’d get your head blown off.”

She shrugs her free shoulder, her indifference forced. “Maybe. Or I’d be on the search for so long that you’d get over yourself and marry Omera. Either way, problem solved.” 

He tenses. “What problem?” 

The more she has to spell this out, the likelier it is that she’s off-target. Through a mounting dread, Cara says, “That it’s three of us, two outsiders and you. If we’re the first, there’s no precedent. If there’s no precedent, there’s no Way for you to follow.” 

He’s silent, holding his breath. 

“You’re gonna tell me I don’t get it,” Cara grumbles. 

“No.” His arms tighten around her, vambrace digging beneath her ribs. “You don’t, but you’re trying.” 

Cara huffs a miserable laugh. They stand that way for a while, long enough for her breathing to regulate to his. 

She  _ aches _ for home. She wants to hold Omera, to stroke her hair and tell her she’s never leaving again, to get on her knees and apologize the best way she knows how, until Omera smiles at her. 

“When you have to get through the forest and there’s no path, what do you do?” Din asks at last. 

“Cut a new one.” 

“And if you cut your path and find it leads to a cliff?” 

Cara stiffens, angling her head toward him. The answer probably isn’t to find someone with a jetpack. 

He says, “The _riduurok_ must be spoken as follows. _Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar’tome, mhi me’dinui an, mhi ba’juri verde._ We are one when together, we are one when parted, we will share all, we will raise warriors.” 

The last four words hit like an elbow to her gut. She understands. Oh hell, she understands, and all at once Cara wishes she’d never started asking these questions. 

“We can’t… we can’t ask Omera to say that.” It’s everything she doesn’t want for Winta in four simple words. Everything they’ve tried to compartmentalize in their lives, everything they’ve tried to keep far, far away from Sorgan. 

They can’t ask Omera to raise a warrior. 

“I know,” he says. 

They found a way where no one had to compromise who they were, and everything was fine—it was hard sometimes, and it wasn’t the sort of thing that could be explained to anyone in less than five minutes, but it was fine, and then she  _ had _ to stomp all over it. Stupid, Dune. Never could tread lightly. 

“Kriff. _Kriff_.” Cara scrubs at her eyes. “We have to tell her.” 

“I can’t.” His voice is barely above a whisper now, and the words come much faster than his usual pace. “If I tell her she can say those words and see my face, she’s choosing between that and her kid. No matter what she chooses, if I even bring it up, I’m the one that made her choose. It isn’t worth it. I’ll live in the dark ‘til I’m krill bait, Cara.” 

She shakes her head and twists to face him, planting her hands on his shoulders. “I can’t hide anything from her. I literally _can’t_. The only reason you can is that your face is covered.” She tries to laugh, but it’s awfully weak. “She’ll know as soon as she sees mine.” 

And what’s worse—it’s  _ wrong _ to keep this from Omera, wrong to let her go on as if there’s no other option. Din was right to say nothing all this time, but Cara can’t, not now that she knows the truth. It would eat her alive, and Omera would know by the guilt in her eyes. 

She has to be told the choice is there, so she can make it for herself. 

He is very still, breathing shallow. Trying to think through another path, but there isn’t one. 

They’re both on the long drop now. 

His voice comes out sounding lost. “What do we do?” 


	4. Resolve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It turns out Mando’a has no future tense.

Here are the things Cara knows about Omera. 

Over a decade ago, before Yavin and before Alderaan, Omera left the Rebellion for her own good. Her cover had been compromised. She went to ground on Sorgan due to its remoteness and relative safety, and she wed a good man and birthed his child. 

She is a patient woman. Infinitely so, it sometimes seems. 

Her husband died. The war ended. She could have offered her services to the New Republic then, but she did not, because Winta was and is everything to her. She has spent her days shucking krill and brewing spotchka, and not once did her trigger finger itch, until Djarin rode into town with his arsenal. 

She has nightmares sometimes—though not as often as Cara or Djarin do. She trembles in her sleep and wakes up gasping. She doesn’t go sit alone like Djarin does after a bad one, and she doesn’t make confessions like Cara does about the things she’s done that still haunt her. Omera stays silently in bed and lets them hold her, kiss her wet cheeks. She responds to their touch and more often than not, those are times they make love; from that, Cara presumes, comes the unspoken assurance that she will not lose them. 

Omera’s duties in the Alliance were building trust, winning allies, and collecting secrets. That much, she has not given up. It must have been part of her from the beginning, part of what made her a good agent. 

She is forever seeing through Cara to the truths she attempts, on reflex, to hide behind a smirk. She sees through Djarin, even with the helmet. She is patient with them. She knows how to ask the right questions, and she knows how to interpret the many ways they don’t answer. She reminds them, without ever saying it in so many words, that all their secrets are safe with her. 

Omera waited for Djarin, and she waited for Cara, as she waits for them now outside the _Razor Crest_ ’s closed ramp. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Djarin says, not for the first time. 

“Has to be done, though,” Cara replies. In this, as in so many things with them, the only way out is through. 

And what’s the point of the two of them, if it isn’t that there are some things Cara can do when he can’t? They’re both only human. 

She gives the nod, and he lowers the ramp. 

It’s a cool morning on Sorgan. The ramp descends into ribbons of mist, woven through the trees. Omera waits, standing very still with her arms around herself and her dark brows knitted. She hasn’t bothered plaiting her hair yet. The last time she looked so strained was in the days of the raiders. 

Cara puts every one of the last seventy-two hours on her face as she walks down the ramp and stops before her, and she says, “I have to tell you something.”

Omera studies her, then takes the hand Cara offers. They walk a stretch into the forest. Cara stops when the weight is too much for her. The mist seems to deaden sound here, to make the silence worse. A good place to spill everything. 

She faces Omera and holds both her hands. “I lied to you,” she says, “and I hurt you, and I’m sorry.” 

“Tell me why,” Omera says, squeezing her hands. “You had a reason.”

Cara shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter now. I have to tell you something you’re better off not knowing.”

Omera’s brow furrows deeper. Cara speaks before she can lose her nerve. 

“Mandalorians can show their faces to someone, if they marry them,” she says. She continues in a carefully clinical tone, as detached as she can make herself. “In order to do this, all parties have to make a vow that includes the words _we will raise warriors_.” 

Omera’s gaze drifts off of Cara, turning distant. “He didn’t want you to have to make that choice,” Cara says. “And I don’t either, but you deserve to know.”

Omera lets go of Cara’s hands and moves away to pace. Cara shuts her eyes. “I left,” she says, “because I convinced myself there was a better way for us all to live, and I could find it. But instead, all I’ve found is that the damage is already done. We weren’t getting around anything by keeping the lights off.”

She hears Omera stop walking. “What do you mean?” 

A long time ago, Djarin said he didn’t belong here. Cara’s pretty sure she doesn’t, either. Many’s the time she has dusted Winta off briskly after a fall and told her _square your shoulders, trooper_. Many’s the time she’s seen Winta follow at Djarin’s heels to patrol the woods, binocs in hand, doing her best to step where he steps, to hide their numbers. 

She did, as Omera guessed, fret that this place would make her soft. Until now she never spared a thought for what effect she—both of them—might have in return. 

It turns out Mando’a has no future tense. 

Cara says, “Who else could people like him and me ever raise?”

Omera is silent so long that Cara opens her eyes, and she can plainly see that she has reached the limit of Omera’s patience. “That’s very dramatic,” Omera says, voice and eyes hard. 

“Am I wrong?” 

“Cara,” Omera sighs. 

“Am I?”

Omera drops her head into her hands. “I need some time. Can you give me that, without running off again?” 

“We are not asking you to choose,” Cara insists, but Omera holds up one hand and pinches the bridge of her nose with the other. 

“I need time. I’ll meet you at home.”

“Okay,” Cara relents, and leaves her there. 

She orients herself and walks north to the village, to their little round house. Djarin sits inside at the table, lights up and helmet on. Cara drops into the other chair and scrubs at her face. “Kids okay?”

“They’re playing in the barn,” says Djarin. He sounds tired. “Thank you for being the one to say it.”

Cara lets out a breath. “Least I could do,” she deadpans. 

She thinks of all the times his shoulder tensed under her cheek, late at night when they were all on the verge of sleep. How many of those times were because he wanted to tell them? Did he feel this same gut-twisting, these same flayed nerves, at the prospect of this exact situation? Does he feel the cliff crumbling beneath him, taking his happiness with it because Cara trod too far? 

Here is the thing they both know about Omera: Winta is everything to her. There is nothing Omera would not give up for her girl, including them. 

Even if Omera doesn’t toss her out, Cara can’t stay now, not after so completely upsetting the balance. She’d never be able to look Omera in the eye. 

They had a good run. For over a year they kept each other happy, within reasonable parameters. She’ll hold on to that when she leaves this place. 

And if ever she is misfortunate enough to love someone again—which she doubts, not after knowing what it is to love the two of them—she will ask nothing of them. Let people have their secrets, their hidden parts, and be content with what she is freely given. Lesson damn well learned. 

How she wishes she didn’t have to learn it the hard way. 

They both straighten at the sound of Omera’s step on the planks. She ducks through the tarp, and gestures for Djarin to sit back down. There is resolve in her eyes. “When you speak a truth,” Omera says without preamble, “you’re just admitting what you already know.”

Cara says, “We don’t want you to compromise—”

Omera turns the full force of her eyes on Cara. “Could you let me down for a minute from the pedestal where you two put me?”

Djarin glances at Cara, and Cara closes her mouth. “Thank you,” Omera says. “I know full well who you both are. I knew when I brought you into our home and into my bed. There are certain things you can’t switch off when you come back from a job.”

Cara starts to ask her what things—tell them and they’ll do better—but Omera holds up a hand. 

“Moreover, I know who I am. And that’s how I know that as soon as Winta is old enough, she will find a way off Sorgan and go join the righteous side of whichever war is raging. The only difference is that when I did that, I was not prepared for what I experienced.” She draws a breath. “Winta has a chance to be prepared. We can give her that, together.”

When it’s been a count of thirty and Omera hasn’t continued, Cara speaks. “So… you’re marrying us so your kid can have well-rounded combat training?”

“I’m marrying you,” Omera says, patiently, “because it will make me very happy for the rest of my life.”

Cara’s face grows warm. She looks away, struggling to curb her smile. 

“Ask Winta what she wants,” Din says, very softly. 

“I will, but I also know what she’ll say.”

“We’ll all feel better if she has the chance to say it herself.” 

“And you’ll say the _ gai bal Manda _ for her?”

Djarin hesitates. “That’s for foundlings. She has a living parent—it’s not my place—”

“Can you show her your face otherwise?” Cara asks. Hardly any point in the three of them going through with it if he still has to be vigilant inside the house. 

“No,” he admits. 

“Then I’d like you to say it for her,” Omera says. “Please.”

After a moment, he nods. 

“Good,” Omera says. “I’ll be back.” And she leaves to get Winta. 

“You okay?” Djarin asks. 

Cara reaches over to where his arm is propped on the table, and grabs his hand. “I think so,” she says. 

Here is a thing she knows about Omera now, a thing that fills Cara with awe and humility: Omera is patient enough to love Cara, despite her clumsiness. 

She goes outside and sits on the edge of the deck as Djarin’s solid footfalls trail her. Presently she sees Winta and Omera walking out past the ponds. She can feel Djarin’s attention focused in the same direction. 

They don’t say anything; they watch as Omera bends to speak to Winta, and Winta asks a question, and Omera nods, and Winta spins away to turn a cartwheel, and then darts back to hug her mother tight around the waist, and then Winta runs toward them between the ponds, sending up clods of earth in her wake. 

“Guess we’re getting married,” Din observes. 

“Guess so,” Cara says. And then she eyes him. “Hey. What happened to asking?”

“After all that, I’m supposed to believe there’s a chance you don’t want to?” Cara glares. He sighs theatrically. “Okay. Will you marry me?”

“Oof,” Cara grunts, because Winta has just run full-tilt into her chest. 

“You guys are getting _married_?” Winta shouts. “You are going to love Sorgan weddings! I stayed up past midnight when Caben and Stoke got married! I’ll make your wreaths!”

“Yeah,” Cara laughs, as Winta lets go of her and launches herself at Din. “We are.”

Din asks again, late that night, after Omera asks him—which is such a good idea, why didn’t Cara think of that? But then, being asked twice feels like a square deal, considering all the circumvention. 

He asks her with his lips wet on her cheek because he’s been between Cara’s legs, and she was going to say yes even before he made her come, but there is nothing in all the worlds that she would deny him now. “Will you marry me, Cara?” he says, and she halfway wants to preserve the shapes the words make on her skin with a new tattoo. 

“Yeah,” she says, finding his hand and holding on. She can count the days they’ll have to do this in the dark on her fingers now. “Yeah, okay.” 

“Ask Omera,” he tells her. 

“You ask!” 

“She asked me already. You have to ask her. I don’t make the rules.”

And she rolls over and asks Omera, “Will you marry me?” with an unsteady voice. 

And Omera says, “Of course I will. We’re a package deal—we come together.” 

“Do you?” Cara says through a grin. “Let’s see.” And she sets to work making that happen. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's day! The trio can have a little marriage. As a treat.


	5. Compromise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Where was your mom born?” Cara asks. 
> 
> Winta shrugs. 
> 
> “She doesn’t talk about it?” Cara presses. 
> 
> Winta says, “You don’t talk about where you were born.”
> 
> Cara keeps her voice even. “What do you think the odds are that your mom’s home planet was obliterated?” 
> 
> Winta has enough self-awareness to look abashed. “Pretty low.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Friday! In case you missed it, I have two stand-alone stories connected to this one now. ["Words of Affirmation"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22539043%22) is from Omera's POV and set just after chapter two. ["Bajur"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22790728) is from Din's POV, set after chapter four.

Technically they could say the words anytime. There’s no ceremony for Mandalorians, no witnesses—the words are what count. 

But they’re not all Mandalorians. 

The more Cara finds out about Sorgan weddings, the more she thinks they ought to elope. For one thing, Sorgan weddings don’t get started until sundown, and Cara knows for sure that she won’t be able to make it through a whole day of anticipation. 

“And then the couple, or…”

“Trio?” Cara offers. 

“Yeah,” Winta says, lashing down the ends of a reed to make a rough circle. There’s a pile of fern fronds waiting for her to wrap them around the reed. “The trio does a full circle around the bonfire. It’s supposed to represent the moons orbiting Sorgan.” She looks up and frowns. “Only there’s two moons, so maybe you could change it? It could be the moons and Sorgan orbiting the sun. But then two of you would have to go around the third, and you’re all going around the bonfire at the same time… Mama could be Sorgan, and you and Din could be the moons! That would be so—”

“Astral,” Cara says, and Winta grins at her. “How long does the moondance go?” 

“Just one time around. But _then_ there’s Speeches & Spotchka. Everybody makes speeches, and every time one ends, everybody drinks spotchka.” 

Cara sets aside her whittling project. “Winta. Be real with me now. Can you hold your liquor?”

The girl nearly falls over from laughter. “The kids don’t drink! We can make speeches though. Really long ones. Everybody says stuff about good harvests and roofs that don’t leak. That part goes on forever.”

“At what point are they officially married?”

“After the meal, when the witnesses say so. Then everybody claps, and there’s dancing.”

“Uh-huh. And when do people go home and go to sleep?”

“I told you! Way past midnight. I fell asleep on the ground and didn’t wake up until Mama carried me home.”

Cara flips her knife end over end as she thinks. Winta tries to copy her motion with a length of reed, but the weight is wrong and it bounces out of her hand, so instead she starts bouncing the reed like that’s what she meant to do. “Where was your mom born?” Cara asks. 

Winta shrugs. 

“She doesn’t talk about it?” Cara presses. 

Winta says, “You don’t talk about where you were born.”

Cara keeps her voice even. “What do you think the odds are that your mom’s home planet was obliterated?” 

Winta has enough self-awareness to look abashed. “Pretty low.” 

“Pretty low,” Cara agrees. She eyes Winta carefully. The girl doesn’t usually clam up, and she didn’t _say_ she doesn’t actually know where Omera came from. 

Omera collected secrets for the Rebellion, and the other side of that coin was to not divulge any of her own. She’s still pretty good at it. She certainly doesn’t wear her identity like Cara and Djarin do; she keeps it concealed. Maybe she passed the skill on. 

Usually Cara loves the mystery, loves being surprised by Omera. It’s only a minor inconvenience occasionally—like when she finds herself consumed with burning curiosity yet again. 

Don’t ask, Dune. Learn the lesson. 

“We don’t have to do all of it Sorgan-style,” Omera assures her and Djarin that night, when Cara recounts the first half of the conversation. “Myself, I’d like to see your face in the daylight first.”

So would Cara. She runs her hand through Din’s hair, and he breathes out across her chest. “I can’t share the meal, or the spotchka toasts,” he says. “Unless, technically, the whole village can be considered your kin?”

“No,” Omera laughs. “No, everyone will understand that.” Cara can hear Winta singing a lullaby for the kid up in the loft. 

“So some speeches,” says Cara, “but no spotchka, and no meal, and by then we already will have said the words. We’ll go once around the fire, and then steal away back home while everyone dances?”

“I danced until nearly dawn,” Omera says, and Cara can hear in her tone that she’s not talking about Caben and Stoke’s wedding. 

Don’t ask, Dune. Let her have her hidden parts. 

Djarin shifts like he’s looking up at Cara, despite the dark. She must have tensed up. “What were weddings like on Alderaan?” he asks. 

She is silent for a long time, but neither of them takes pity and changes the subject. “Does it matter?”

“If it matters to you.”

Cara hopes he can’t hear the little flip her heart does. 

It doesn’t matter, though. It can’t. Alderaan is gone, and the things they did in Alderaani weddings require Alderaani bits, and she’s the only Alderaani bit they’ve got. That will have to be good enough.

She settles her hand over his. “It’s okay,” she says. 

He doesn’t pursue it. Omera puts her arm around both of them. Up in the loft, it’s quiet at last. 

* * *

Cara wakes alone. Birdsong and the children’s shouts tell her it’s day, beyond the lightshield. She’s having a good stretch when Omera comes inside and switches on a glowlamp. “Morning,” Cara grunts.

“Good morning,” Omera says, and leans down to kiss her. “Breakfast is cooking. Din left early—said he had to run an errand.”

Cara sits up and gets the worst of the sleep snarls out of her hair with her fingers, then starts braiding back one side. “The kind that involves leaving the planet?”

“If the credits he took with him are any indication, yes.”

She hits a tangle, and pretends that’s why she’s frowning. It’s not that Djarin is safer, precisely, with her around—she attracts her own kind of trouble, and as often as not he gets dragged along with her. And he said errand, not job, so it ought to be tame. 

Maybe this is how Omera feels when the two of them leave. 

“Just you and me tonight,” she says, to distract herself. “Do they do hen nights on Sorgan?”

“They don’t,” says Omera, and she seats herself on Cara’s lap. “We should establish the tradition.” 

Cara gets her arms around Omera’s waist and pulls her closer. She rests her head against Omera’s chest to listen to her strong heartbeat. “I don’t know if the locals are ready for the way we party.”

“It could catch on.” Omera kisses the top of her head, and gets up. “I’ll bring the spotchka.”

Cara follows her out into a beautiful day. After breakfast, she finds Winta and presents her with the item she carved the day before. At first, the girl isn’t impressed. 

“I already use a real knife,” she tells Cara. 

“Sure,” Cara says. She tosses the carved wooden knife in an arc, and Winta tracks the way it lands solidly handle-first in Cara’s palm every time. “But you won’t lose a finger if you practice with this one. It’s still pointy, though, so be careful.” She demonstrates by slinging it down between their feet, where it sticks, pretend-blade first, in the sod. 

Winta yanks it out and wipes the dirt off. “Thanks, Cara!”

For the rest of the day, Cara spots her practicing: flipping it, spinning it on her palm, throwing it at a dilapidated old basket, and once, dancing the tip between her fingers on a stump while the other kids watch. 

Late that night, long after Winta has sung the runt to sleep and gone quiet herself in the loft, Cara lays beside Omera. They’re both about three quarters drunk, and the window of time where Cara has the energy to get frisky, before she gets sleepy, is being kept open only by the warmth of Omera’s hands on her skin. 

“Tell me about this one,” Omera says, touching a puckered scar under Cara’s ribs. 

“I brought a blaster to a knife fight,” Cara says. “But then I let somebody in too close.” 

Omera’s eyes tighten, reading the memory of pain under Cara’s nonchalance. She moves downward to place her lips on the spot, just as she kissed the raised lines below Cara’s elbow, from when a railgun tore a dropship apart around her in midair. Just as Cara kissed the silvered stria of stretchmarks on the slope of Omera’s belly, and the half-dozen tiny marks on Omera’s slender fingers where a krill knife slipped. 

Cara lets herself shiver. Omera returns, smiling softly, to the pillow. Emboldened, Cara takes Omera’s hand and sets her palm on the faded burn at Omera’s forearm. It’s an older scar than the others, but Omera keeps her arms wrapped during the day like the rest of the farmers, so it’s been well preserved. “What about this one?” Cara says. 

Omera sobers so quickly that Cara regrets asking. Another stellar course of action, Dune. 

“I need to tell you something,” Omera says. 

Gently, Cara tucks Omera’s arm back between them, and releases it. “You don’t _have_ to tell me secrets when you’re spotchka-drunk.” 

“I want you to know,” Omera insists. “The spotchka’s just the courage I haven’t had to tell you.”

Cara sits up. “Okay.”

Omera mirrors her, folding the blanket around her bare shoulders. She keeps her eyes on the bed between them, but it seems to Cara that she is looking beyond it. “I left the war,” Omera says, “because I sent people to their deaths.”

It takes Cara a moment to realize she’s holding her breath, and then she tries to inhale quietly. 

“I had been cultivating a contact in the Partisans for over a year,” Omera continues. “They had a lead on something new the Empire was developing—biological weapons, species-targeted plagues. They’d nearly made it to the testing phase, in a facility on Alsakan. 

“My contact and I planted ourselves in a group of locals who sold contraband to the staff. I did enough recon to convince command that the threat was real, and that we could eliminate it. They assigned me a strike team, and so did the Partisans.”

She takes a deep breath. There’s something hollow in her gaze now. “But then I found out my cover had been compromised. The Empire had my name; they knew my face. I should have called off the mission and gone to ground immediately, but we were so _close_. And I was young, and cocky, and so damnably proud. I was sure, as long as we were quick and careful, we could see it through. 

“It never occurred to me that my own intel was bad. That they rearranged the patrol schedule because they knew they were being watched, or that they had the troopers in the building on half rations so their supply deliveries made it look like they were operating with essential staff only.” 

“How many made it out?” Cara says, already knowing the answer. The burn lays across Omera’s arm the way a burn would on someone who raised their arm to shield themselves against a detonation. She doesn’t have to read the memory of pain, or imagine watching her squad disappear in a blast. 

“Only me,” Omera says. “The mission was a success, at the cost of two teams, the relationship I had tried to build with the Partisans, and my usefulness to the Rebellion. I turned in my report, and I went into hiding before they could transfer me from field work to an administrative role. 

“I did a lot of things, up until that point, and none of them ever troubled my sleep. That, though…” Omera lets a stream of air out through her teeth, somewhere between a hiss and a rueful laugh. She shuts her eyes to keep out whatever it is that she’s seeing, or whatever is on Cara’s face. “I wanted you to know, before. Either you’ll hate me, or you’re the only one who can understand.”

The only one, maybe, who has enough similar experience to offer Omera absolution. 

She could tell Omera they all knew what they signed up for. She could tell her Cara has never met a Partisan who didn’t have a close personal relationship with the idea of dying. She could tell her Cara dropped into her share of death traps on shaky intel, always sanguine with the likelihood of not walking out after. She could tell her Omera saved billions of lives, and the arithmetic of that is something no Rebel would condemn, not ever. 

But Omera has carried this, alone, far too long for cheap sentiment to be of any use. The weight of it, and the bygone sorrow in her expression, is beyond words. 

Cara leans forward to touch her face, and Omera’s eyes open. Cara presses her lips to Omera’s. It’s a chaste kiss, but Omera falls into it. She trembles, and Cara steadies her shoulders. 

After a moment Omera breaks away, and rests her face against the side of Cara’s neck. “When I met Winta’s father,” she says, “I was still looking over my shoulder. I never told him why. He waited so patiently for me to realize that I was safe here, with him.”

Cara doesn’t ask, won’t ask, but Omera answers anyway. “It was a logging accident. We lived in town at the time. Winta was barely a year old. It felt exactly like when my cover was compromised—like the life we started was one more false identity, and I was left to float out in the cold. I had no idea how to shuck krill at the time, and nowhere else to go. Coming here was like waiting at the edge of the world. I didn’t think I’d ever feel the way I felt with him again.”

Cara shifts to wrap her arms around Omera’s waist and pull her into her lap. She gets one hand into Omera’s hair to cradle the back of her head. With the other, she lifts Omera’s wrist, and presses her lips to the old scar. 

“I’ve got you,” Cara whispers, and Omera softens in her arms. She’s safe with her. All of her is safe with Cara. “I’ve got you.” 

* * *

She’s still a little hungover, mostly emotionally, when Djarin comes home three days later. Cara wakes to find him back in bed like he never left. He stirs at the same moment she does. “Hey.”

“How’d it go?”

“Fine,” he says. “There’s something in the barn for you.”

“For me?” Cara grins into the dark. Behind her, Omera puts one thigh over Cara’s hip. “Well, there’s something right here for you.”

They’re all late getting out of bed, but Cara does emerge from the house eventually. She crosses the dewy ground, and peers inside the barn—but before she sees it, she smells it.

It’s in the center of the floor and it comes up to her knees, a bale of coarse grass the color of rust. Cara bends down a little as she walks toward it, one hand outstretched. 

“There’s a settlement of survivors on Dantooine, if you ever want to go,” Djarin says from the doorway. 

Cara digs her fingers into the bale and pulls a handful free. She snaps the stalks in her hands, and lifts them to her face, and breathes in. 

The fog didn’t have a smell, when it rolled out of the mountains on winter mornings and padded the red plains. But if it did, it would have smelled like this. 

“You only need a handful of this for censing,” Cara says around the tightness in her throat. She hears him shrug. “How much did you pay?” 

“More than they asked.” Of course. Of course he did. He adds, “I tried to find a wine vessel, but it was out of my range.”

Of course it was. There’s no blue clay anymore. That died with Alderaan—but someone… someone saved seeds from the red plains and took them to another planet, and tended them until they grew in foreign soil. Somewhere there is a field of censing grass, bending in the wind. 

Cara stands there for a long time with the last fruits of home in her hands. Djarin approaches, slowly. 

“What was it like?” she asks him. 

“Small. Not much bigger than the village. The people there are doing all right.”

No doubt, after his extravagance. 

“It made me understand why you like it here,” he says. 

“I like it here for all the same reasons you do.”

“Sure, but I still expected you to get restless by now.”

She musters a smirk. “Tell me more about myself, Djarin.”

He waits a moment in her peripheral vision before saying, “You like it here because you were able to save this place.”

Her pulse pounds in her ears. Too close. Much too close to the mark, and she is still too raw from, well, everything. “I take it back. Stop telling me about myself.”

He nods like he expected as much. “That’s all I had, anyway.”

Cara turns toward him, pressing her face to the rough cloth between his pauldron and helmet. Din folds his arms around her. They stay like that for a spell. 

When she pulls herself together and looks up, Djarin’s kid is climbing onto the bale, blanket trailing from his tiny hand. Cara watches the runt curl up on the grass and close his eyes. 

She thumps Djarin’s breastplate with her fist. “That’s it,” she says. 

“What are you doing?” he calls after her as she strides out of the barn. 

“Gotta talk to Winta!” she says, and she goes to find her. 


	6. Illumination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She considers him while she eats. “When I figure this out, I’ll need to borrow the _Crest_.” 
> 
> His shoulders stiffen. It would be imperceptible if she didn’t know to look for it. “What for?”
> 
> “I’ll need to get something for Omera.”
> 
> “What?”
> 
> “I don’t _know_ that yet.” Maybe her home planet uses some kind of fancy shawl at weddings. Maybe they exchange rings. Maybe, conveniently, they burn native grasses or make reed-wreaths, and she’ll go planet-hopping for nothing. 
> 
> “Then what am I supposed to say when Omera sees the _Crest_ leave?” 
> 
> Cara’s pulse kicks up, but she takes the time to chew and swallow her food before answering. “Tell her I’m doing the same thing you just did.”
> 
> She doesn’t add _you hypocrite_ , but he hears it all the same. 

Cara flatters herself to think she’s good at research, and the terminal on the _Razor Crest_ has access to an impressive variety of databases. Still, she spends a full day entering queries with variations on the lyrics Winta taught her, until it seems as though she’s searching for the right question, and not actually an answer. 

The lullaby didn’t come from Druckenwell, or Carida, or Yavin, though all of them had relevant historical events. There are no recordings of any songs with the lyrics Winta sings to the runt. 

Cara even tries to reverse-engineer a search for the melody, using what little she knows of notation thanks to one university course a lifetime ago. She gets entirely too many results to sort through. Melody is contagious, it seems, particularly the melancholy intervals that make up this song and appear again and again in traditionals from a thousand far-flung systems. 

“Have you eaten yet?” Djarin asks, and Cara fails to hide that he’s startled her. 

“I had some rations a few hours ago.” She looks out the canopy at the angle of the sun through the trees. Okay, eight hours ago. 

He sets a cloth-wrapped bundle on the console, and Cara opens it to find bread and berries. “Thanks,” she says. She sits back in the pilot’s seat, and almost puts her feet up on the console’s edge like she’s already done repeatedly today, but she catches herself in time. 

“There have been so many wars I’ve never even heard of,” she sighs. “No one should live here. And who sings to children about dying in pits?” It’s a rhetorical question, but it’s also the one she’s been trying to answer all day. 

“Lullabies are morbid,” he says as he settles into one of the jumpseats. 

Do Mandalorians sing to foundlings about the Night of a Thousand Tears? Do the other Alderaani survivors have lullabies about the Disaster? Does Sorgan, without a genocide in its history, have songs to warn children of what happens if they venture into the woods at night?

Karked up galaxy they live in, all told. 

She considers him while she eats. “When I figure this out, I’ll need to borrow the _Crest_.” 

His shoulders stiffen. It would be imperceptible if she didn’t know to look for it. “What for?”

“I’ll need to get something for Omera.”

“What?”

“I don’t _know_ that yet.” Maybe her home planet uses some kind of fancy shawl at weddings. Maybe they exchange rings. Maybe, conveniently, they burn native grasses or make reed-wreaths, and she’ll go planet-hopping for nothing. 

“Then what am I supposed to say when Omera sees the _Crest_ leave?” 

Cara’s pulse kicks up, but she takes the time to chew and swallow her food before answering. “Tell her I’m doing the same thing you just did.”

She doesn’t add _you hypocrite_ , but he hears it all the same. 

Very slowly and very carefully, he says, “I’m not the one who gave her cause to fret about me running off.”

She sets the food down, and turns to face him fully. “Din,” she says, and he lifts his chin. “That’s why I need the _Crest_.”

Because they all know he’d hunt her down if she didn’t bring it back—and more importantly, because she has to do this quickly, to find whatever it is and bring it home in a fraction of the time it would take her to buy passage on other ships. 

Because as intolerable as it is to live with these questions, it’s a hundred times worse to imagine not marrying them immediately. Cara can’t put it off any longer. She’d marry them yesterday if she could. 

All is silent and still as he considers her. It stretches on, but she doesn’t break his gaze. 

Finally he sighs and drops his shoulders. “All right,” he says. 

“Thank you.” Cara puts her hand on his knee. “I mean it. If it were me, I wouldn’t have to _say_ anything.” 

He does his _when you’re right, you’re right_ head tilt. 

Cara turns back to the console, with all its old queries and dead ends on screen. _Death pits_ , she enters for the _n_ th time. And then, _\+ face + communication_. 

“Oh,” she says when the console pings a result. 

He leans forward to look over her shoulder. “What’s in the Kanz system?” 

An answer. Cara has a good feeling about it. “You ever run into any Lorrdians?”

“Aren’t they human? I wouldn’t know if I had. Have you?” 

She reaches back and finds his hand waiting for hers. “I’ll tell you soon.”

Djarin pulls up a chart and runs the preliminary calculation for a jump. “Five days,” he says, which leaves her two on-planet. “If you’re not back by then, I _will_ marry Omera without you.” 

Cara grins at him. “Maybe I’ll be a little late, and crash the wedding.”

He shakes his head and turns toward the door. “Jate’royir,” he says. 

“Hey.” He stops at the ladder and looks back. Cara signs, _Thank you_. 

He nods once, and leaves her the _Crest_. 

* * *

After a day and a half in hyperspace with nothing but the research terminal for company, Cara understands so much more about Omera—and none of it is useful for this trip. 

Lorrdians have an elaborate nonverbal form of communication, and they have the ability to interpret the expressions and body language of others with unsettling accuracy, and they have… completely bland weddings. The vows they speak are simple. Unsurprisingly, given their long enslavement three millennia ago, they use no possessive pronouns when they commit to each other. 

There is no mention in any anthropological articles of rings, or nice shawls, or anything else that can be conveniently purchased and transported back to Sorgan. Strange to think that Djarin had an easier time finding something for Cara, and that was a remnant of a vaporized planet. 

But at least Cara knows now why she can’t get away with anything around Omera, why at times it seems the woman is halfway psychic, why she knows what Cara needs before Cara has even admitted that to herself. 

Why, too, the fascination with Djarin from the very beginning: because in one way at least, he is an enigma to her. 

Not for much longer, though. It will be nice to be on even ground. 

Cara lands the _Razor Crest_ in Qatamer’s spotless spaceport, and walks down the ramp into the dry heat of the afternoon. She pays for the berth and tips the attendant, and then she exits into a sandstone plaza ringed by single-level buildings whose cornices feature carved geometric patterns. 

Only a handful of locals are out in this heat. An arched doorway interrupts the city wall to the north. Through it, Cara can see the desert stretching away to yellowish sky, as well as the nearest of the mounds she spotted from orbit, where the slave pits once descended into the stone beneath her. 

“If you are here for a name, I would be happy to assist you.”

Cara turns. The woman who approaches is several inches shorter than her, at least ten years older, and thin. She has high cheekbones, dark eyes, and cropped black hair; she wears simple, lightweight robes and carries a sack of leafy vegetables. Her skin is a shade or two lighter than Omera’s, but her features suggest a shared ancestry in some distant time. That, and her quiet dignity, make it hard for Cara to speak at first. 

“I might be,” Cara says, not to be coy but because she genuinely doesn’t know. It’s as good a place to start as any. 

The woman watches Cara’s face, but her own expression reveals nothing. The way she tilts her head and takes a breath before answering, that’s Omera all over. “I am Avila. Please, follow me.”

How far this place feels from home, and how uncanny it is to see Omera’s bearing on this small woman’s frame. How much Omera had to change when she left Lorrd. How thoroughly she established herself on Sorgan, that only now can Cara see where she really came from. 

Out of the plaza and down a narrow street, next to a covered market, they come to a pavilion that shades a terminal. “What do you know of her?” Avila asks. 

Cara smiles wryly. No one’s ever had to be clairvoyant to recognize that she likes women. 

“Nearly everything,” she says. “But the only name she gave me is Omera.” 

Avila regards her, still inscrutable, before keying that in. A holoprojector flickers to life over the terminal, displaying a dozen names. All are grey except for two in green, and one in blue. 

“I thought so,” Avila says. “Kierst and Vaig. They will not return to take up their names.”

“Her parents?” Cara says, squinting at the long name in blue. “You knew them?”

The woman dips her head. “It was my honor to serve with them in Freemarch. They wanted to keep all of that far from their daughter, to create a world where she would never need to fight. She was but a girl when she left to continue their work. If she will not return, there is no one else to inform.”

Cara recoils. “Oh, no. It’s not like that. She could still come back, someday.” The same day Cara goes to Dantooine, perhaps. Could be a nice grief-themed family vacation. 

Avila looks askance at her. “Then you are here to…”

Cara clears her throat. “I was hoping to find her a wedding gift.”

Avila inclines her head. “Congratulations to you both.” When Cara says nothing, she amends, “All.”

Oh, she’s good. If Omera had stayed here, stayed in practice, they would have no secrets from her at all. But then, Cara would never have met her. 

“Thank you,” Cara says. She looks back at the list, and struggles to find the right question. “Why do people leave their names behind when they leave Lorrd?” 

“As you see,” Avila says patiently, “our names are where we came from, and who raised us. Those things can be damaged when removed from Lorrd. They can be forgotten. Our actions can bring disgrace to them. It is best to keep them safe, here.” 

“It’s meant to be secret?” Leave it to her to overstep yet again. Stupid, Dune. 

“If that were so,” Avila says, “we would not give them to outsiders. Nor would we ask outsiders to come here and tell us when a name must be put to rest. It is meant to be safe.” She tilts her head. “You don’t understand, but that is to be expected.” 

“No,” Cara agrees. “I don’t think I need to understand it, though.”

Avila smiles, more with her eyes than her mouth. “Remember that, and your marriage will be a long and happy one.” 

“I will,” Cara says. 

“There are many things in the market that will remind her of home. Good luck in your search,” Avila says, and leaves her. 

In the covered market, Cara passes stalls of wine, and fabric, and fruit, and flowers, and jeweled rings and plain bands, and shawls so finely made they could pass through the rings. 

Beautiful, all of it: the work of a resilient people, work that preserves their past. But Cara has what she came for, and she doesn’t spend a credit. 

All the way home, she turns the shape of Omera’s name over and over in her mouth. She practices it like she’s been practicing the _riduurok_ , until she can say it perfectly. 

Cara lands on Sorgan four days and seventeen hours after she left, and walks down the ramp, her pack on her shoulders, to put her arms around them both. “Cutting it close,” Djarin observes. 

She had to make a stop on the way back. “I took your ultimatum seriously, believe it or not.” 

Omera leans back to look in her eyes. “Are you going to tell me what you were doing?” 

Cara kisses Omera’s brow, where the worry settles. “I am,” she says. Her face is already sore from the breadth of her smile, and the effort of not saying Omera’s name right then and there. Just this one last secret, and then she won’t have to keep any, from either of them, ever again. “But not yet.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jate'royir - "good hunting"
> 
> The old-canon elements and headcanon infodump in this chapter are entirely due to fandom referring to Omera as "Omera of Sorgan," which reminded me of one of my favorite old-canon characters, Fiolla of Lorrd. I miss her and I hope she gets reintroduced to SW canon soon. 
> 
> I can't believe this fic is almost over! Cheers for sticking around. Due to travel plans, the next/final chapter will be posted a day early.


	7. Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Omera blinks at her, her cheeks growing warm under Cara’s palms. For just a second Cara wonders if she made a terrible mistake, if Omera doesn’t want it returned to her. And then Omera puts her hand on the back of Cara’s neck and yanks her into a kiss that sets Cara’s heart to aching. 
> 
> Cara pulls back enough that their foreheads can touch. She says the words as steadily, as carefully, as she said Omera’s name. “ _Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar'tome, mhi me'dinui an, mhi ba'juri verde_.” 
> 
> Omera says them back to her, and then it is done, and even though none of the words translate as possessive, Cara is hers. Omera kisses her, and goes to Din next. He bends his head to her, and he starts to speak—and this time Omera says the words in unison with him, and Cara has to admit that’s a great idea. 
> 
> Cara does it too, when it’s her turn, with her brow pressed to cold beskar and his voice steady beneath hers. And she steps back, and Omera does too, to give him space. 
> 
> Din lowers his head, and lifts the helmet off. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Massive thanks to everyone who has kept up with this fic and left me comments and kudos! You all keep me going.
> 
> Anyway, here's Cara and Omera's unboxing and review of the Mandalorian.

On her wedding day, Cara wakes to the bed creaking because Omera and Din are boning right beside her. 

Cara blows out a breath through her nose. “You couldn’t wait?”

“Nope,” Omera pants from somewhere above. Her hand finds Cara’s cheek, and Cara kisses her palm. 

She turns on her side and moves in close to Din. “Nervous?” she says. 

“Yes,” he grunts.

Cara gets her hand into his hair, and brushes his ear with the tip of her nose. “What for? We’re predisposed to like your face, after all the places it’s been.” 

“Is this… the time?” 

“Sure is.” She places a line of kisses along his jaw. “You can talk to us. I’m not nervous.” She’s never felt this certain of anything. 

His jaw tenses under her lips. “That’s because… you don’t have… to change.”

Omera stops at once. Her hair falls across the two of them like a curtain. “We aren’t asking you to change,” she says. 

But they kind of are. Over a year they’ve carried on this way. A body gets used to certain things, and they’ve all gotten used to the dark. “We’ll switch the lights off whenever you want,” Cara promises. 

He freezes up, then sighs sharply and turns his face away. 

Cara works her fingers against his scalp. “I mean, I guess it’s dark inside cocoons, too,” she continues, “but the Codru-Ji get through that okay.”

“You think I’ve been hiding two extra arms this whole time?”

She intended to make this a cack-handed transformation metaphor, but she can’t resist the opening he leaves. “If you were, you could always be in the middle.” 

He huffs, and then he’s quiet as Omera kisses him. It’s a long kiss, and it leaves them both gasping. 

“An cuyir am,” she whispers, and the next breath Din takes is a ragged one. 

They start moving again. Cara waits patiently. At some point, Omera made a bundle of the censing grass and hung it above the bed; Cara smells it now, over the scent of them together. 

Omera climaxes with a soft gasp, and Din follows, groaning. 

Then they rest a moment, and finally they turn their attention to Cara. And when she comes a little while later, with Omera’s hands on her and Din’s mouth on her, it is the last time she’ll have to do that in the dark. 

* * *

Since she already needs a wash, Cara spends the morning cutting wood for the bonfire. Good, simple work—the kind that clarifies her thoughts and keeps her muscles humming. 

The bonfire and its Sorgan-dance are not for them, but for Winta and the other farmers. Still, as she thinks over all they have to do today, Cara finds that she wouldn’t want to skip it if she had the option. What are they, after all, but two bodies that fell into the orbit of a third? What are all of them now, if not Sorganites by choice? 

The pieces they have collected for each other are only fragments, mismatched and out of order and probably more complicated than they need to be. Ultimately Cara has nothing to give them but what is already theirs: a handful of words, their own past, and a circle of protection that will only ever be as large as the span of her arms. 

Her commitment was made long before today. All she’s going to do is admit a truth they already know. But it has to be spoken; it’s the speaking that counts. 

She finishes with the wood, and goes to the river to wash herself and her clothes. The cold of the water makes everything sharper, makes the air sweeter and the light more golden. Cara rebraids her hair and sits for a while to dry in the sun. 

On her way back to the village she stops at the edge of the trees. Din and Winta are out in the field together. He kneels to look her in the eye, and Winta waits while he speaks. Then she throws her arms around his neck. He hugs her back. Winta runs into the village, and stoops down to tell the runt about it. 

Cara joins Din in the field. “Father of two,” she says. “How does that feel?”

“Strange,” he sighs. “But… nice.” He tilts his head at the sky. “It’s getting late.”

“It is. I’d better go change.”

“You—what?”

She gives him a grin over her shoulder. “You think I’m gonna get married wearing this?”

Inside the barn, she empties her pack. As a rule she doesn’t do white, Alderaani tradition or no. But the fabrication shop where she stopped on the way home had every color she could want, including several in spectrums she can’t see, and once she’d been scanned it took all of ten minutes for the droids to assemble the cut she selected. 

It’s a cheap thing, and flimsy enough that she’ll probably tear the perfectly fitted seams if she exerts herself. In short, completely impractical. But she only needs it for one day. 

Anyway, if they pass anything down to Winta, it will be Omera’s best dress. Which happens to be what Omera is wearing as Cara walks out of the barn in her arrangement of pale blue and slate septsilk. 

Omera gasps. “Why, Miss Dune. Is that what you were up to? Aren’t you just full of surprises.”

“Mm,” Cara agrees, and kisses her. 

Winta runs up, with her brother in her arms and a pack that looks much too large for her on her back. “We’re ready! Oh, _wow_ , Cara.”

“Thanks,” says Cara. “Where’s your old man?”

“I’m here,” Din says, coming out of the house. He looks Cara over, and nods like it will do all right. Cara makes a face at him. 

“Okay! Let’s go!” Winta says, and she takes off past the scaffold of the bonfire. 

“What were you doing in there?” Cara asks. 

“Taking down the tarp,” Din says. 

“You hear that?” Cara says to Omera. “No turning back now.” 

Omera only smiles, and takes Cara’s arm. 

The thin slippers that came with the dress are not made for long walks, and Cara’s long hem catches on the brush until Din gathers it up and holds it for her. Still, the hike goes faster this time because Winta has kept busy by cutting a path to the picnic clearing. 

When they arrive, the girl is already unloading her pack: first the blanket, then Cara’s scanner, then the sheaf of grass, and then the three wreaths, which she distributes to each of them. She signals to the runt, and he sets pebbles in a ring large enough to contain the censing grass. Winta brings out a little tinderbox and lights the grass, and glances at Cara as it catches and sends up a plume of fragrant smoke. Cara nods her approval. 

She and Omera look to Din. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “If you could… say it to each other first?”

Maybe that’s the Way, or maybe it’s what he needs, to see their commitment before he commits himself. Either way it’s no hardship, and it’s exactly what Cara hoped he’d say. 

She can’t hold back her grin any longer. She places her hands on the sides of Omera’s face, and looks into Omera’s eyes, and she says, “Kierst-and-Vaig Payan Omera of Lorrd.” 

Omera blinks at her, her cheeks growing warm under Cara’s palms. For just a second Cara wonders if she made a terrible mistake, if Omera doesn’t want it returned to her. And then Omera puts her hand on the back of Cara’s neck and yanks her into a kiss that sets Cara’s heart to aching. 

Cara pulls back enough that their foreheads can touch. She says the words as steadily, as carefully, as she said Omera’s name. “ _Mhi solus tome, mhi solus dar'tome, mhi me'dinui an, mhi ba'juri verde_.” 

Omera says them back to her, and then it is done, and even though none of the words translate as possessive, Cara is hers. Omera kisses her, and goes to Din next. He bends his head to her, and he starts to speak—and this time Omera says the words in unison with him, and Cara has to admit that’s a great idea. 

Cara does it too, when it’s her turn, with her brow pressed to cold beskar and his voice steady beneath hers. And she steps back, and Omera does too, to give him space. 

Din lowers his head, and lifts the helmet off. 

His hair is dark, as Cara knew it would be. It’s unevenly mussed from the helmet. She knows its softness and its scent. Until now, she never imagined it would catch the last of the sunlight like bronze. 

His forehead wrinkles as he looks from Cara to Omera and back. Two deeper creases sit off-center between his brows. 

His eyes are dark as well, and warm. There is something in them that could be mistaken for fear, if she didn’t know him. 

His nose looks like it was meant for some other, rougher face, but Cara is no less charmed. His nostrils flare as he breathes in. 

His lips are parted, nicely shaped—but she knew that, too, by feel. His lower lip is reddened, from biting at it, perhaps. Stubble peppers his sturdy jaw. 

Someone should say something, Cara thinks, and then Omera breathes, “There you are.”

His face breaks into a wide smile, and in the same moment that his forehead smoothes, the lines at his eyes deepen. “I hope—” He clears his throat and tries again. “I hope it was worth it.”

Omera grabs Cara’s arm and pulls her forward to close the distance. “Yes,” she whispers, and presses her lips to his, and Cara chokes up a little because that, that looks _good_. And then Omera backs away and brings Cara to him, but Cara doesn’t want to stop looking yet, so she rests her forehead against his for a minute. 

Yes. Yes, it was worth it. 

Cara kisses his lips and touches his broad cheek, and then she has to stop even though she’d rather not, because this will get out of hand fast, and the kids are watching. 

She gets his wreath and sets it on his head. This, she realizes abruptly, is the first time he has seen them without a display screen between them, or blindfolds over her and Omera’s eyes. “How do we look?” she asks him. 

It’s amazing how many expressions can cross his face in the time it takes him to swallow. He’s always so still. All this time under that bucket, he’s been having face journeys. 

“Good,” he says, voice rough. He is so painfully earnest about it that Cara has to look away and kiss Omera’s smiling lips, which draws a sigh from him. 

Cara hears a rustling, and she turns to find Winta digging deeper into her pack and setting out three large cups and two small ones. 

“Are you serious?” Cara says. 

“You’re married according to the Mandalorians,” Winta says, focusing very hard on pouring spotchka for them, “but you’re not married according to Sorgan until we say so.” She nods at the kid, who chirps in agreement. 

Cara looks to Omera, who is biting the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. Din huffs a laugh. “Fine,” Cara says, and they sit. 

Winta hands out their spotchka, and serves the runt a tiny cup of water, and then she stands and holds up her own cup. “When I first met Din,” she says, “he scared the poodoo out of me.”

Din winces, adorably. Omera lifts her cup strategically to savor the bouquet of her drink. 

“And Cara wasn’t much better,” Winta goes on. “Because you’re both really tough, and it took me a long time to understand that my mom could see what was inside. And now I also understand how happy you both make her. I noticed she has a different smile for each of you, and then a third one for when you both do something stupidly dangerous.”

Cara sneaks a glance at Omera, who catches her looking. Her lips turn up at the corners. 

“Sometimes,” Winta says, “you even make me happy, which is way harder to do. So, I’m very glad that you’re joining our family. I wish us all many baskets of krill, and fruitful bounties, and shelter from the winter rains, and maybe another little brother or sister, and a long and happy life. The end.” 

They drink. Cara pretends it’s the sharpness of the spotchka that makes her blink back tears. “That was very nice,” says Omera. 

Winta holds up a hand. “It’s his turn,” she says.

The runt lifts his cup as high as he can. “Hwaaa,” he says, and, “iinii.” Then he sips solemnly, and Din’s eyes go very soft as he watches his boy. 

“Good job,” Winta tells her brother. “Let’s eat.”

And they do, all of them, together. After a few minutes, Omera starts to feed morsels to Din. Which, again, is a great idea—Omera is a genius. But Cara doesn’t try to shove into the moment; she watches them, the way Omera presents a piece of bread and Din takes it delicately between his teeth and lets his lips brush her fingertips. She watches as a breeze comes through the clearing and he turns his face toward it, and his eyelids drift closed. 

“The sun’s going down,” Cara says. “Are we married yet?”

Winta turns to the runt, and they have a silent conversation. “After you go around the bonfire,” Winta tells her.

“Deal,” Cara says. “And not a second later. Let’s pack out.”

Both the moons are high and bright, nearly full, by the time they’re back at the village. A cheer goes up from the crowd gathered at the bonfire, half-drunk already. Omera accepts most of the hugs, and Caben has the guts to hug Cara, which is more amusing than annoying. 

Din has his helmet back on for this, of course, and the firelight and the moonlight glint off it as he and Cara circle Omera, and Omera circles the fire. Cara tries to lean in for a kiss when she passes in front of Omera, but some combination of the shoes and the spotchka and her own giddiness make her unsteady. 

And too quickly, just like the last year has gone in this place, the circle is closed and they’re back where they started, and their neighbors cheer again. Someone brings out instruments, and another cup of spotchka is pressed into Cara’s hand. 

Din slips away first, an impressive feat for someone so reflective. Cara tries to disengage from three different conversations before Winta grabs her hand and pulls her to the edge of the firelight, where Din and Omera wait. 

“Goodnight, Mama,” Winta says. “Goodnight, Cara. Goodnight, _buir_.” And she runs back to the party. 

Cara won’t waste the shot. She gives Winta a salute, takes Omera’s hand and Din’s in hers, and leads them both home. 

Inside, she switches on a glowlamp. Din drops into a chair. “I need a minute,” he says, his voice raw. 

Cara switches off the glowlamp. “Because she called you _buir_?” Omera asks, gently. 

He pulls off the helmet. There is enough moonlight and firelight through the slats of the house to see him put his head in his hands and nod. “Come here,” Cara sighs, and she bends to offer him a trailing corner of her dress. 

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t ruin it.”

Cara tilts his chin up so she can give him a flat look. “In a few minutes, you’re going to rip this off of me.”

He blinks up at her, and oh, kriff, now they have another set of Big Sad Eyes to deal with. 

To keep herself from laughing, she kisses the creased spot between his brows. He lets out a breath as she presses the silk to his cheek. 

“Omera’s already naked,” he says. 

Cara does laugh now, and looks back and finds that he is absolutely right. “Guess you’d better catch up.”

He nods toward the glowlamp, and Cara turns it on, and she sits on the bed beside Omera to watch their Mandalorian make a neat stack of beskar and base layers. He very carefully does not look at them, but neither does he turn away. 

All this time in the dark, Cara didn’t realize she was thinking of him as parts rather than the whole. The hand that brings her fingers to his mouth, the thigh that fits nicely between hers, the voice against her skin, the cheek under her palm. Here is all of them, all of him, at once. 

When he’s finished undressing, Omera stands. Cara watches the sway of her hips as she goes to him. 

Omera sets her hand on his cheek. “You’re so beautiful,” she tells him, and that’s another great idea, to actually say it instead of sitting here thinking it. And to say it that way,  _ so _ beautiful. Not like it’s news, not like he needs them to tell him, but because it’s so much, it has to be spoken. Apart from all of Omera, Cara has never seen anything so beautiful. 

Din swallows. He has that look in his eyes again, the rawness. Omera holds his hand, and takes him to bed. He sits. Omera kneels over him. She leans down to kiss him, and Cara makes a needy sound. 

The sight of their bodies together, of all of him and all of her, is more than she was ready for. Cara is burning up in the dress. 

Din takes one hand off Omera to reach for Cara, and he doesn’t have to say anything. 

Cara stands, takes off one shoe, and sets her foot beside him on the bed. He looks up at her while Omera continues kissing his face, and he runs his hand up Cara’s calf and under the dress. Cara watches his eyebrows furrow in concentration, his lips twitch when he finds her thigh holster and holdout blaster. She smiles beatifically down at him. “I can’t wait to finally beat you at sabacc.”

“You think so, huh?” Leaning past Omera, he takes the dress’s hem in both hands, and he tears the silk all the way to her hip. 

Cara grins, and he returns it. Even if he somehow doesn’t have a hundred tells and she can’t actually beat him at sabacc, there is so much more she can do now. She can drink spotchka with him. She can watch him sleep. She can watch him talk to Omera, watch him turn his whole body toward her and hang on her words. She can ask about each one of his scars and see the memories cross his face as he tells her. 

She can touch his face. She touches it now. He tilts his head, leans into it, and that’s a lot. It’s all a lot. Cara’s eyes sting. 

“Turn around,” Din says very softly. 

She does, and Omera shifts so he can get up behind Cara, and she feels his hands between her shoulderblades, and then he tears the fabric there, too, and pushes it off her shoulders and down her arms, and pulls the structured part away from her torso, and his breath cools her feverish skin. 

“Cara,” he sighs, and Cara shoves down everything she’s still wearing, and turns around to kiss him. He groans into her mouth. His hands steer her hips to the bed. She sits back next to Omera, and Din goes to his knees, and looks up at her hungrily. 

Cara leans back on her elbows. Din lowers his head, but if Cara keeps hers up, she can still see his eyes. They flutter closed as he tastes her, and then he remembers himself and opens them again. His pupils are blown wide, dark eyes darker. 

Omera moves close, her arm across Cara’s shoulders and her gaze on Din. “New favorite thing?” she says. 

“Oh, yes,” Cara whimpers. 

“How do you say wife in Mando’a?” Omera asks. 

Since Din’s mouth is occupied, Cara answers, “Riduur.” How far they’ve come since she asked him to teach her some swears. 

Din licks the span of her cunt, and Cara whines. “And husband?” Omera adds. 

That’s _riduur_ , too. Cara laughs, breathless. “ _Din_ ui,” she says, putting the accent on the wrong syllable. 

Din skips a beat, and she can  _ see _ him trying to decide whether he should correct her. But Cara grins down at him, and his eyes lock on hers, and he doubles his efforts. 

“Ah, yes,” Omera says, knowingly. She presses her lips to Cara’s flaming cheek. “Ner riduur,” she whispers, and then, touching Din’s hair, “ner dinui.” 

Din shuts his eyes, and hums. Cara loses sight of him as her head falls back against Omera’s shoulder. When next she sees him she is on her back, stars obscuring her vision. He looks dazed too, lips swollen and wet. He leans down to kiss her once more, and then he sits on the bed, and Omera climbs into his lap. 

When Cara catches her breath she sits up beside them, watches him and Omera in profile. It’s her new second favorite thing: the way they try to move slow and draw it out, the way Omera can’t stop touching and kissing Din’s face, the way he reacts to every sensation, the awe in his expression as he watches Omera climax, and finally the way he presses his face to her clavicle and parts his lips to let out a splendid moan. 

They lay him down after that. Cara props herself on the pillow beside him, her eyes on his as he tries admirably to stay awake. She runs her thumb across his lower lip, a thing she has done hundreds of times before, and never once like this. He tries to stay focused on her, but they’ve worn him out. 

Omera gets on top of her. Cara turns so she can kiss her, slow, drowsy, satisfied. Din moves closer and Cara turns her head and opens her mouth to his. Omera makes a lovely sound, and presses against Cara until Din breaks away to kiss her again. 

Cara has the sudden mental image of his face above her; she’s never wanted him to put her on her back, but if she could see his brows furrow with the effort… it’s something to consider, at any rate. Not tonight, but perhaps the next time they spar. 

The light through the slats is more blue than orange now. Omera touches Cara’s face, and gets out of bed. It’s time. 

Omera puts her dress back on, and Cara finds her spare shirt and trousers. It will take Din far too long to dress, so they leave him in bed, with one more kiss each. 

The moons are low and the bonfire is down to coals. A handful of villagers sit up still, talking quietly; they raise their cups to Cara and Omera, but they’re too tired to be rowdy anymore. The kids sleep, Winta’s head pillowed on her arm and the runt curled beside her, just close enough to the fire to stay warm. Cara picks up the runt, and Omera gathers Winta into her arms. They tuck them both in their bed in the loft, and come back down into the house. 

Din sleeps, his face still at last. Cara turns off the light and climbs into bed behind Omera. She listens to them breathe. 

She’s tired, to be sure. And for the first time in weeks, if not much longer, she is entirely at peace in her own mind. She dozes, but she doesn’t fully sleep. 

Not until the dawn leaks pale golden light into their house. Din wakes then, startled and unaccustomed, and his eyes track across the ceiling and down to her and Omera. Then he remembers, and relaxes, and turns to put an arm over both of them. 

Cara smiles at him, and she rests. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "an cuyir am" = all is change
> 
> buir = father 
> 
> "Ner riduur, ner dinui" = my wife, my gift

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers for reading! You can send me prompts for this OT3 over on my Tumblr @hauntedfalcon.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Words of Affirmation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22539043) by [hauntedjaeger (saellys)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger)
  * [Bajur](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22790728) by [hauntedjaeger (saellys)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger)




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